Hello, This photo reminds me of living within walking distance to the railroad tracks coming from the Long Beach/Los Angeles Harbor to its inland destinations. It ran behind our old house and the Terminal Island freeway. (It is still there in the same place today, with the future plans of increasing the multiple tracks to use rail transportation from the harbor to the inland centers instead of the 1000s of diesel trucks.) Terminal Island Freeway in the foreground, the train on the elevated tracks in the back and the tall electric power grid lines near the Lion’s Dragstrip field property. Back when we lived there, it was tempting to walk across the open freeway property and climb up to the tracks. What do kids do on train tracks? Walk a mile either way toward the harbor or north, past our junior high school baseball field into the Compton area. (after 1955, we had ringside seats to watch the race cars at Lion's Dragstrip that sat across the farmer's plowed fields while sitting on the high ground railroad tracks...) We always saw other kids playing on the tracks with rocks and sticks, being crushed by the fast trains coming along heading North, usually. The odd thing was, it was a rare sight to see a train coming South back toward the harbor. We heard and knew the stories of other kids from our elementary school playing on the tracks and we were always cautious. Jnaki Then one day at the elementary school, the word spread that one of our friends was no longer in school. We had plenty of kids moving out of the area to other parts of So Cal. (being so close to the Navy housing project housing areas) But, this was news to us. We had just seen this kid playing on the tracks with others and we all walked to the harbor area that day. But, he was missing from our classroom and school. So, the question kept coming up that year. Time moved forward and by the time we were in an assembly later on as teens, we had a guest speaker. A tallish kid in a wheel chair was the main speaker. He was selected, due to his being similar in age to all of us in high school. No one knew anything about the speaker. As the teenager spoke, we noticed he looked familiar. It was our old elementary school friend from our old neighborhood. He was missing since 2nd grade and we thought he moved away. Well, he said in his speech, he did move away. But, now he was selected by the local PTA groups to be a guest speaker to all high schools first and then he would do the junior high school tour. Each of the 5 high schools had at least 3-4 junior high schools feeding into the larger campus. It was a surprise, but he went on to tell why he was in a wheel chair. The story went back to the early days of being a kid on the Westside of Long Beach and what he did for fun in the community neighborhood. Walk the “tracks,” throw rocks at the train cars blasting by, having the train squash rocks and pennies on the tracks, etc. Things we all did at the elevated berm where the train came by several times each day. Later on, we sat on the tracks to see the newly opened Lion’s Dragstrip from the berm above our junior high school baseball field. The tracks are still there and still being used. But, the sad thing was, our friend made a mistake and paid the penalty for his error in judgement. His lower legs got cut off and almost died on the tracks. We never saw it happen, but his mysterious disappearance and the hush, hush of community stories kept us wondering all of these years. But, now, there he was, on stage talking about being responsible as developing kids into the teenage years. We talked to him afterwards and he remembered all of us. His parents moved immediately after it happened and lived near a different hospital in Los Angeles for years until he recovered. In our hot rod/drag racing years, the longtime mystery was solved… YRMV Stay safe out there!
The catch line of the late, great announcer Jan Gabriel. "SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY! AT SMOKIN' US 30 DRAG STRIP!!! WHERE THE GREAT ONES RUN! RUN! RUN!"
The Jalopy Journal
